Sunday, August 31, 2008

We’ve started on a city transportation project here in Boulder that was postponed about four years while the city went through some belt tightening. The project is actually an addition to a pedestrian/ bicycle underpass to the University of Boulder campus. We finished the east side of the tunnel entry in 2004. Now we’re onto the west side. The project will involve incised patterning into the “Wind Tunnel” walls, aluminum pattern facing, four wind vane pillars at each side of a pedestrian/bike bridge, a spiral graphic in the entry plaza and tile murals on the wing walls of a wind pattern image similar to the other side.

So far we’ve completed the incised patterning in the concrete walls and will work on the other parts of the project as it progresses through the end of this year and beginning of next. We'll keep publishing updates as the work proceeds.

CLOUD CELLS

We’ve also just finished a commission for the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Aurora. It is a series of sunscreen “clouds” that arc around a stair atrium in a new wing of the Anchutz Campus of the University complex. The work was commissioned through the Colorado State Arts Council as part of their Art in Public Places program. The concept was to merge the shapes of clouds and micro cellular structures in a colorful merging of similar forms. The Anchutz campus is a new addition to this huge medical studies extension of the University of Colorado. We had completed another commission here at the newly completed Anchutz Cancer Pavilion in 2002

The long reach to the clouds

ETOWN - STAGE SET FOR THE DNC BUELL THEATER SHOW

A panic call from Nick and Helen Forster requesting a stage set background for their nationally broadcast “ETown” radio show put us into the sweat shop to design and build the set pieces in a record three days. With little sleep we rushed the sunscreen set to it's destination for early morning 7 am set up. Arriving at the theater loading dock we started setting everything up but there was a noticeable lack of stage helpers...in fact, we were the only ones there. Eventually someone arrived and asked us what we were doing. "We're doing the set for the Etown show...is there someone to help lower the fly battens for us?". There was a confused look on the man's face. "This is the Auditorium Theater...you want the Buell Theater...that's next door". Oops!

We found the proper stage door to the Temple Buell Theater in the Denver Center for Performing Arts complex and set everything up. The show was during the frantically packed Democratic National Convention and was videotaped for a television broadcast in the near future. A great line up of musicians included James Taylor, Neil Young, David Crosby, Irma Thompson, Anni DiFranco and special guest Robert Kennedy Jr. and made for a fun, sold out show during the DNC nomination party for Barak Obama.

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ABOUT AIRWORKS STUDIO

The studio started from a simple joy of making kites in 1976 and has expanded to working with the themes of flight and air in sculptural works. The aerial sculptures now include the aerial acrobatics of colorful and kinetic mobiles, wind blown sail forms, delicate suspended structures, banners, arching bridge forms, wind activated works and installation sculptures.

We have been a collaborating artist team on various sculpture commissions, theater performance works and international kite exhibitions since 1996. Our combined works span a wide range of disciplines. Airworks Studio was created in 1999 to further the exploration into the realms of aerial sculpture.

AIRWORKS STUDIO WEB SITE

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ABOUT US

G E O R G E P E T E R S

George Peters has a thirty year history of working with aerial forms from gallery works to installation sculpture, kites, mobiles, wind sculpture and banner works. He has completed over seventy national and international commissioned works for private, corporate and public institutions. He attended Art Center School of Design in Los Angeles and has worked in various art fields as a visual artist, sculptor, craftsman, fiber artist, environmental and installation sculpture, graphic arts, illustration, photography, film animation, digital imaging, architectural modeling, theater set and costume design. Since creating Airworks Studio, Inc. with artist, Melanie Walker in 1999, their joint works have won national and international public art commission awards.

M E L A N I E W A L K E R

Melanie Walker has an exhibition history that spans more than thirty years. She received a BA from San Francisco State University and an MFA from Florida State University. She is a mixed media artist and is invested in ideas. Her approach to materials includes photographic media, digital art, sculpture, installation, fiber art, printmaking, costume design and public art. She has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally and has work in a number of permanent collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson. She is presently a professor of art and teaches photography and alternative photographic processes at the University of Colorado, Boulder.